Finding the Spot

From the mind of Kato McNickle

Where do you send your play? How do you find theaters? Who wants to read it?

First off, you're reading this at the Playwrights Zoo, linked to hundreds of theaters in the USA that accept unsolicited plays and queries. Start clicking links and see what theaters like to do.

You click. What next? Do you go straight to the "Submission Guidelines" page? I hope not. Take a look at the theater's current season. After that, go to their "About Us" page. Read their mission statement. Find out what their primary goals are. Does your play jibe with that?

Check out their production history, what sort of community do they serve? All of this information will help you spend your postage and printing dollars best, and save the valuable time of the people in the trenches trying to find the next great play for their production company.

After all of that investigation, if you're still thinking, "I gotta work with these people!" then find out how you can get your script in the door.

How else do you winnow down the best place to send your plays? Create your dream list. Where are 10 places that you'd die to work in? Think big. Think best. Now think, "How do I get them to notice me?"

Start a plan. Notice who's who in that theater. Pay attention to what kind of plays they are doing, what kind of actors do they cast, what are they about?

Send them a querie and track what happens. How long does it take to get your first response? Did it take a week to get a rejection from an intern? Did it take six weeks to get a rejection from an assistant? Did it take two months to get a positive response from an associate or a manager? All of this matters.

Keep a log of every place that you send to. Track when you send, what you send, when you heard back, how you heard back. Make notes: How often does the literary office experience turnover? How often do you get a personalized letter? Are you getting the kind of responses that let you know that they are genuinely considering your work?

You've got to think about this like the bussiness person that you are (or are on your way to becoming.) Or, if making it a business really kills the buzz, approach it as a scientist. You've got data to collect, patterns to observe, and adjustments to make to initiate your desired outcome.

Featured Playwright: Caridad Svich

BEST QUOTE: "Performance is always about life or death, whether it is sports or theater"

Caridad Svich is as much a major force in any American theater landscape as she is at the center of the Latino/Latina playwright world. Her plays and adaptations are only part of hr contribution to the theater. She is a prominent arts advocate, interviewer and publisher. She participates in multiple spheres and works as hard to promote and propel the works of colleagues as she does her own.

Bio:

Caridad Svich is a playwright-songwriter-translator-editor of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish and Croatian descent. Her works have been staged across the US and abroad at venues as diverse as Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, INTAR, The Women's Project, 7 Stages, Cleveland Public Theatre, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, Dad's Garage and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her plays have been workshopped by Actors Touring Company in London, Mark Taper Forum, The Public Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre/Hedgebrook, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Royal Court Theatre, and Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, among many others. Awards include 2002-2003 Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University/Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, a TCG/Pew National Theatre Artist Residency, an NEA/TCG Playwriting Residency, and Rosenthal New Play Prize. She is editor of Trans-Global Readings: Crossing Theatrical Boundaries (Manchester University Press), and Divine Fire: Eight Contemporary Plays Inspired by the Greeks (BackStage Books). She is co-editor of Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes (Smith & Kraus), Theatre in Crisis? (Manchester University Press), and Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latina/o Theatre and Performance (TCG). Some of her translations are collected in Federico Garcia Lorca: Impossible Theatre (Smith & Kraus). She is founder of the pan-American theatre collective NoPassport, is contributing editor of TheatreForum, and on the advisory committee of Contemporary Theatre Review (Routledge/UK). She holds an MFA from UCSD

Read her PLAYS.

Read an ALL ABOUTher.

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Featured Playwright: Ann Marie Healy

Ann Marie Healy

BEST QUOTE: "I like the idea of voices divorced from context, characters who create their universe through speaking, carving it out with language."

Ann Marie Healy is a wiry sort of woman with insanely curly hair that nowadays is often restrained in a knot at the base of her head. Her plays are eerie assemblages of patter and repetitions that create worlds that are wholly theatrical. Ann Marie works with language, often spun with regional overtones, like, well, Minnesota for one. She is currently part of the Brown MFA program.

Ann Marie Healy's play Dearest Eugenia Haggis received a workshop production with Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks 2005 as well as a development reading with The Cape Cod Theater Project. Her two latest plays (When He Gets That Way and Have You Seen Steve Steven) were recently developed through the support of Soho Rep and MCC's Playwrights Coalition. Now That's What I Call A Storm was produced by Edge Theater Company last spring. Somewhere Someplace Else was produced in 2003 with Clubbed Thumb in New York and with Frontera/Hyde Park in Austin (winner of two 2002-2003 Austin Critics Table Awards).

Her writing is published through Playscripts, Inc., Samuel French, in various Smith & Kraus anthologies, and in The Kenyon Review. She is a five-time finalist for Actors Theater of Louisville's Heideman Short Play Award and a finalist for The Perishable Theater's International Women's Playwriting Festival. She is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb; a member of MCC's Playwrights Coalition; a member of 13P; a former member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab; and a writing fellow at New River Dramatists in North Carolina. She was recently awarded a NYSCA commission for her new play entitled The Story Of Minnie Willet.

Read her PLAYS.

Read an INTERVIEW.

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